


Sketches

by fmo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M, selfie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2502527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are photographs and videos and even paintings of Bucky, but none of them are quite right. They don't quite look like Bucky; something's off. And Steve's sketches don't seem right either, no matter how much he tries. Fortunately, Steve finds a better solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sketches

The Smithsonian doesn’t say much about Steve’s time at art school. Seems like the displays there are more interested in the numbers of his old life: only five feet tall, four inches. _This_ many ailments. Look at the transformation.

Sometimes he feels a little offended when he thinks about that panel, the little Steve that fades into the big one. Like the “before” and “after” photographs on late night commercials for workout videos or diet pills. Thing is, those two photographs are still _both him_.

Anyway, there’s not much about his drawings. What with one thing and another, he didn’t end up keeping most things that he drew; it didn’t seem worth it. He used to throw out his old sketchbooks after a while. Then, after the Serum, he moved around so much that anything he sketched got lost in the shuffle. It wasn’t important.

Steve feels a little funny when he finally finds an art supply store and buys a sketchbook, a good eraser, a tin of pencils, and a sharpener. He isn’t sure he ever really got used to drawing with his new, bigger hands, either. But he buys them anyway, and he tries to draw.

There are photos of Bucky. In the Smithsonian, there’s even art that someone else made of Bucky. It looks good, kind of beautiful, really. But something about it doesn’t really look like Bucky. That artist, whoever it was, never really knew Bucky; the Bucky Barnes in the Smithsonian’s art is just a copy of a copy, an idea put together from photographs. It’s missing something important.

So Steve tries. He draws. And, because of the Serum, he knows that he remembers right; he can even still see that map that he glanced at, back in that first base at Azzano, the one that Peggy was proud of him for remembering. You’d think he’d know Bucky’s face by heart.

But it doesn’t quite work. Even working from all the photographs of Bucky that there are, even if Steve looks at the little video clips that Bucky’s in, the Bucky that he draws isn’t quite right. Even the photos and the videos don’t completely capture the Bucky he’s trying to see. Something’s missing. Maybe it’s that the videos are too jerky; they don’t show how smooth Bucky always moved, how lovely he tilted his head or smiled.

Steve sketches, and thinks of the smells of Bucky that he remembers. Plain soap. Cigarette smoke, because Bucky didn’t smoke but the guys he worked with usually did.  Scotch on his breath in London, the sleepy look in his eyes when Steve wasn’t sure if Bucky was tired or drunk or if it was just the ghost of the Hydra camp still with him. How funny he was, how awful funny when things were worst. Comb tracks in his hair that the photographs don’t capture.

Pages full of half-finished sketches of Bucky stay in Steve’s sketchbook. Sometimes he thinks about tearing them out and throwing them away, but it doesn’t seem worth it. And maybe if he looks back at them he can figure out what he’s got wrong, what he needs to add to make them right.

Steve forgets—tells himself he forgets—the sketchbook at Sam’s house when they go on their search for Bucky. But when Bucky’s finally back in Steve’s new apartment in Brooklyn, and Steve finally drives up from Sam’s with his belongings in boxes in the back seat, he realizes that the sketchbook is in one of the boxes. He realizes it when Bucky is unpacking, making dry commentary on a few things here and there to break the silence, and then Bucky pulls out the sketchbook.

Bucky doesn’t open it right away, though. He just holds on to the cover and then says, softly, “You still sketch.”

Steve shrugs a shoulder and says, “Been kind of busy recently.”

Without asking, Bucky opens the cover and sees—himself. Steve isn’t sure how he’ll respond, but Bucky keeps paging through, and Steve feels like he has to explain. “None of them seemed to come out right,” he says.

“Look okay to me,” Bucky says after a minute, pausing over a rough sketch of Bucky in his dapper sergeant’s uniform with the belt and his hat tilted. Steve has always disliked that sketch particularly, because it doesn’t capture Bucky’s movement at all. Bucky used to love tilting that hat, and he always moved with an extra kind of jauntiness when he had it on. Steve thought later that it must have made him feel good to wear it.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says. “You know how cell phones have cameras in ‘em now.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, still drawn to the sketch.

“You mind if I take a picture of you?” Steve says. “Or, both of us.”

Finally, Bucky closes the sketchbook and puts it down. “How’re you gonna take a picture of both of us and keep it in focus?” he says, like he thinks Steve’s being overly ambitious.

“It does it automatically,” Steve says. “You just have to hold the phone out.”

A frown. Not a no, just the frown that sometimes appears when Bucky’s making a decision. “Okay,” he says at last.

Steve takes out his phone and shows Bucky the screen. He taps. “Here, you just—and then you hold the phone out with your arm.”

Bucky nods, and then when Steve holds the phone out he shuffles a little closer, finally putting his left arm carefully around Steve’s waist. So Steve does the same, and he lets the inch or so between them melt away.

The phone makes a camera sound.

Steve pulls his arm in to look at the picture and show it to Bucky. Steve thinks that he looks a little silly, as always, the fishbowl effect of the camera making his new jaw look even bigger than it really is, but—his temple is against Bucky's, and his shoulder is pressed to Bucky's. They're so nearly the same height now. And there, Bucky’s looking at the phone, although he has his head tilted down, so he’s more looking up at it from underneath his eyebrows, which makes him look reproachful. And, of course, he’s still got the stubble that he always has these days, and his hair is falling into his eyes.

It looks right. It looks like Bucky, Steve realizes. Not the old Bucky, but the Bucky he is now. It looks real. Just a second of an ordinary day, captured. What a wild indulgence—Steve can just take a photograph of Bucky any old time, every day if he wants to. And keep it forever.

“Steve,” Bucky says, leaning closer. His arm is still on Steve's waist. “Hey. It’s just a, it’s a picture, that's all.”

Steve shakes his head. “Let’s throw the sketchbook out. It was no good anyway. This is better.”

“Are you kidding?” Bucky says, but there’s a flicker of amusement there. “It looks terrible.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Steve says, holding the phone gently. It’s so small.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment! I hope you find this a worthy addition to the halls of Steve/Bucky Selfie Fic.


End file.
